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Zak Woodman

@zacharywoodman.bsky.social
787 followers 728 following 2.9K posts

Unapologetic neo-Pragmatist, Unterrified Hayekian, radical liberal. Podcast coordinator for @c4ssdotorg.bsky.social‬, Deputy Editor @NotesOnLiberty.bsky.social.

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Reposted by Zak Woodman
The Bulwark @thebulwark.com · 05/07/2026
"When courts insist that race-conscious remedies are constitutionally suspect, they don’t remove values from constitutional adjudication. Instead, they prioritize one value—formal racial neutrality—over competing values."
lnk.thebulwark.com
The Supreme Court Says It’s Neutral. It’s Not.
Some of the Supreme Court’s recent decisions rely on the idea of neutrality. But its appeals to neutrality misunderstand the concept and mask a grasping approach to the law.
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Matthew Dowd @matthewjdowd.bsky.social · 05/07/2026
on this day in 1852 "abolitionist Frederick Douglass delivers his "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" speech at a meeting organized by the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society in Rochester, NY." "I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within...
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Zak Woodman @zacharywoodman.bsky.social · 05/07/2026
Anyone who identifies strongly with their nation state has been deluded into a false conciousness that is politically dangerous and morally irrational, whatever the merits or demerits of the particular parts of the history of that nation state they have decided to identify with may be.
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Amanda Roos @amandaroos.bsky.social · 05/07/2026
There are innocent people who can't celebrate today because ICE kidnapped them and put them in detention centers. Abolish ICE! WE ARE NOT FREE UNTIL WE ARE ALL FREE.
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Zak Woodman @zacharywoodman.bsky.social · 05/07/2026
theunpopulist.net
There Is No Originalist Rationale for Denying Citizenship to the US Born
So the conservative dissenters on the Supreme Court ditched their own preferred approach in the recent birthright ruling
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Zak Woodman @zacharywoodman.bsky.social · 05/07/2026
This is your brain on nationalism.
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William Gillis 🏴 @rechelon.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
Damn, I guess we do need to break the old meme out
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The Bulwark @thebulwark.com · 02/07/2026
Take the wins we get, but stay cautious. SCOTUS rejected his brazen constitutional gambit, but cleared the way for potentially the largest revocation of legal immigration status in American history. ICYMI @adriancarrasquillo.bsky.social:
lnk.thebulwark.com
Trump Lost on Birthright Citizenship. But He’s Winning the Immigration Wars.
SCOTUS rejected his brazen constitutional gambit—but cleared the way for potentially the largest revocation of legal immigration status in American history.
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Kevin Elliott @kjephd.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
As I was saying: anti-immigration politics is insatiable—literally cannot be satisfied—by any concrete menu of policy changes because it's not about policy! It's about ethnic purity, & purging the body politic of the enemy alien. Every 'reasonable grievance' is a stalking horse for ethnic cleansing
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Janet Bufton 🍁🌻 @janetbufton.ca · 01/07/2026
Anti-immigration politics/opposition to cosmopolitan citizenship in particular has (for a long time now!) been a defining principle for today's political right around the world. Policy triangulation on immigration has been worse than useless because it's about the principle, not the specifics.
liberalcurrents.com
Closed Borders Are the Line in the Sand
The way forward is clear.
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The Fig Economy @figgityfigs.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
One of the most striking things here is how absolutely mutable conservatives’ specific views are. Trump emerged on the scene ten years ago and within that time, it has become dogma that the previous 160 years of birthright citizenship are incompatible with even *being* a nation.
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Zak Woodman @zacharywoodman.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
"What people are objecting to is the brutality and militization of whipping slaves, they still want to support returning slaves to their rightful owners"
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Zak Woodman @zacharywoodman.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
Ah yes, Hayek is just like Marx because he *checks notes* believes in a deterministic scientific theory of history. I am starting to think Yarvin is an illiterate dolt with nearly subhuman levels of stupidity, like most delusional authoritarians who imagine they are elite rulers.
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Ned Resnikoff @resnikoff.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
Also, it's long past time to retire vulgar Marxist arguments about how racism and nativism are just a tool that the capitalist class is using to divide the working class. This stuff is not a distraction. It is a central motivating and binding force in politics, both in the US and elsewhere.
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Jason Kuznicki @jkuznicki.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
If immigrating illegally were a test that selected against being a good future member of society, then I should think we’d see more crime per capita among undocumented people. But the exact opposite is true. Being willing to defy our foolish immigration laws is a test for good citizenship.
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Zak Woodman @zacharywoodman.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
As if almost everything that is wrong with racism does not imply in nearly equal if not greater measure to the moral cancer that is nationalism.
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Zak Woodman @zacharywoodman.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
Rand Paul is, once again, authoritarian scum. Please, stop calling this nationalist slopulist a libertarian.
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Zak Woodman @zacharywoodman.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
The fascists are now openly calling for enforced eugenics. This is, again, just consistently applying the authoritarian logic of immigration restriction.
dailyboulder.com
MAGA Republican calls for ‘sterilization of all foreigners' after Supreme Court rejects Trump’s birthright citizenship ploy
Apparently, losing one Supreme Court case was enough to send one prominent MAGA figure completely off the rails. After the Supreme Court rejected Donald Trump's attempt to end birthright citizenship t...
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Zak Woodman @zacharywoodman.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
The authoritarian bullshit spouted by this fascist swine is ths logical end-point of closed borders.
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Michael Clemens @mclem.org · 01/07/2026
The White House would like to inform you, ladies of the world, that in order to board an airplane to the United States you’ll be forced to urinate on a test-strip.
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Mark Jacob @markjacob.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
"No other country does birthright citizenship," Trump told reporters and the public yesterday. Not a single reporter told him he was wrong – that 32 other countries have it – even though all of the reporters knew that, or they should be fired for not knowing it.
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Ma Carol @caroodles.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
We are at North Korea levels of corruption. We are no longer a functional democracy.
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Ned Resnikoff @resnikoff.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
The Birthright citizenship ruling should be a wake up call to any Dem who is still on the fence about court reform. We are essentially one seat change away from the Court undoing Reconstruction by fiat.
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Alejandra Caraballo @esqueer.net · 30/06/2026
It's going to end up being a surveillance state that requires severe privacy risks for girls to participate in sports going forward including invasive genetic testing and physical examinations.
A pressing question now is how sports officials will determine if competitors are girls and women, as defined by the opinion. While gender verification testing — a long-vilified and intrusive practice — has resumed at the Olympic level, how will grade schools, middle schools and high schools conduct those tests? And will everyone be tested, or just the athletes who draw suspicion?
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Zak Woodman @zacharywoodman.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
The fact that we have 4 SCOTUS justices willing to openly defy both the very obvious plain text of the 14th Amendment and the completely one sided 130 year precedent of Birthright citizenship is an embarrassing indictment of the intellectual honesty and legitimacy of this court.
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Nathan Goodman @nathanpgoodman.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
For an idea of why activists often hold noise demonstrations outside of jails, prisons, and detention centers, I recommend this 2024 call to action that @nycabc.bsky.social posted at @igd.bsky.social: itsgoingdown.org/internationa...
This is a call for a raucous night of strong solidarity with those imprisoned by the state on one of the noisiest nights of the year. On New Year’s Eve gather your crew, collective, community, organization, or just yourself and come together to raise a racket and remind those on the inside that they are not alone.

Internationally, noise demonstrations outside of prisons are a way to remember those who are held captive by the state and a way to show solidarity with imprisoned comrades and loved ones. We come together to break the loneliness and isolation.
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Nathan Goodman @nathanpgoodman.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
The Trump administration wants you to see a July 4th fireworks display as akin to a bombing. They use the public's ignorance of common activist practices, like noise demonstrations, to spin more fanciful stories than the evidence supports. gunsguardsandgovernance.substack.com/p/decades-fo...
An “Attack” or a Noise Demonstration?
Prosecutors repeatedly describe the noise demonstration as an “attack” on the ICE facility. They note that the defendants used fireworks that night. Prosecutors strongly insinuate that these fireworks were used to attack the facility. For example, Ryan Raybould, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas, said that “explosives launched at a detention facility were a far cry from a peaceful protest or First Amendment expression.” The implication is that this was a malicious and violent firebombing attempt, rather than an unlicensed and unpermitted fireworks display.

But prior to the event, participants consistently discussed it as a noise demonstration. This term suggests that fireworks were used not to attack the detention center, but simply make noise that could be heard by detainees inside. Notably, the noise demonstration was on July 4th, a holiday where fireworks displays are often used to celebrate.Noise demonstrations outside prisons, jails, and detention centers have a long history. Activists bang pots and pans, use megaphones, or otherwise seek to make a lot of sound that can be heard behind the prison walls. The goal is to tell the incarcerated that they are not alone, that they are not forgotten. For example, after members of the Stop Cop City movement in Atlanta were raided and arrested in December, 2022, their allies held a noise demonstration in solidarity with them outside the Dekalb County Jail.

The use of fireworks by the defendants was meant in the same spirit. The goal was not to use explosives to hurt or harm, but to send a message of care and solidarity to detainees.

Indeed, this goal was explicitly articulated at trial. Notes from the opening statements directly say that demonstrators were “there to bring hope to detainees by using fireworks.” At the demonstration, Maricela Rueda shouted the word “esperanza,” which means “hope,” into a megaphone.

Further support for this motivation can be found in Autumn Hill’s opening statement. She said that after shooting fireworks she “saw prisoners crowding and watching and felt satisfied.” This was a fireworks display on July 4th, for a captive audience that otherwise would not see one.

The goal in shooting fireworks was clear: not to attack anyone, but to spread a message of hope that could be heard and seen by detainees.
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Kelly² @anarchakelly.bsky.social · 28/06/2026
This is underscored by the right’s obsession with man of systems thinking where the state can centrally plan everything from corporate board rooms to the ethnic composition of the “nation”
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Patrick Chovanec @prchovanec.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
This is why you don't impose illegal taxes in the first place. And why, if you're a court, you issue an injunction until you can rule on their disputed validity.
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ergopraxis @ergopraxis.bsky.social · 28/06/2026
I'm seeing people talk about price controls as decommodification, which is bonkers. You can't take a micromanagement policy fully enclosed in the logic of the background permanence of the relevant capitalist market and just call it decommodification. That's like marketing fraud.
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ergopraxis @ergopraxis.bsky.social · 28/06/2026
The left will have matured when it comes to understand that the free market is exceptionally good and progressive in its capacity for sensible urbanisation, and that this is fully compattible with basic leftist commitments about public provisions and egalitarian distribution.
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ergopraxis @ergopraxis.bsky.social · 28/06/2026
You're imagining that a walkable city involves a municipal council coming together to do comprehensive city planning, but it historically involved the relative absence of zoning and free commercial activity that allowed people to build and open up shop wherever needed.
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ergopraxis @ergopraxis.bsky.social · 28/06/2026
Important to understand that the walkable euro cities the left idealises specifically came up through centuries of ~anarchic housing and commercial development. The endpoint of high modernist planning *is* the american suburb with its one concentrated mall a 30 minute drive away.
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Zak Woodman @zacharywoodman.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
Because those two things are not contradictory. It can be the case that there is a big social problem and that the blunt instrument of public policy will have so many negative consequences and huge erosions of privacy rights for everyone that it is not justified.
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Zak Woodman @zacharywoodman.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
Let's see, what should the democrat's policy proposal be. Roll back Trumpian fascism? Protect election integrity? Court reform? No, of course its stoke a delusional moral panic about kids for an authoritarian power grab of state power that will destroy online privacy for good.
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mady castigan✨ 🏳️‍⚧️ @mady.cat · 29/06/2026
Democrats Project 2029 being just more fascism is so insane, yet so incredibly predictable. Can't wait to see how the party destroy their margins with young voters with hugely unpopular pushes to censor the internet and force queer kids into the closet with no access to resources or friends.
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Andy Craig @andycraig.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
The Constitution explicitly gives Congress the power to say all inferior officers can be, if Congress wants, appointed by the courts. Not by the president or even by presidentially appointed principal officers. That's been used very sparingly, but the option existing shows how absurd this theory is.
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Adam Gurri @adamgurri.liberalcurrents.com · 29/06/2026
Judith Starr's contribution to The Reconstruction Papers includes, among other things, the proposal to have district courts do this for interim inspector general positions the way they do for interim US attorney positions www.liberalcurrents.com/the-reconstr...
watchdogs in their agencies. The
high number of vacant IG offices
that exist now (some of which have
existed across administrations)
shows that the VRA approach does
not work well for IGs. Fortunately,
there is a model that could be
adapted for temporary IG appointments; namely the interim US attorney appointment statute.35
To guard against the politicization
of local US attorney offices, Congress
offered an alternative method for
appointment of interim US attorneys.
This appointment method co-exists
with the VRA method. Under this law,
when a US attorney position becomes
vacant, the Attorney General can
make an interim appointment, but
only for 120 days. Once that time
period ends, if there is no Senate-confirmed US attorney in place, the district
court for that district may appoint an
interim to serve until a permanent
official is confirmed. Over the past
year, the courts have rebuffed numerous efforts by the Attorney General to
evade the time limits in the interim US
attorney statute and the VRA.36
The courts can make these appointments because the Appointments
Clause of Article II of the Constitution authorizes the courts to appoint
“inferior officers.” According to the
Supreme Court, an inferior officer is
one who reports to someone below
the level of the president.37 US Attorneys report to the Attorney General
and hence are inferior officers, as
the Justice Department conceded in
United States v. James.38 IGs report to
their agency head and thus should
also be considered inferior officers,
especially since, unlike US attorneys,
IGs only make recommendations and
provide information; they do not
make policy or administer laws.
Because independence is integral
to the function of an inspector general, if an IG position remains vacant
for a lengthy period of time, there
is a strong case for placing interim
appointment authority with a neutral judiciary. As with US attorneys,
interim appointments by the president (for PAS IGs) or the agency
head (for
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Ned Resnikoff @resnikoff.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
The three branches of the United States government, as delineated in the Constitution, are the God Emperor, The High Council of the Six Ayatollahs, and the Federal Reserve
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Andy Craig @andycraig.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
What is left is not an office created "by law" as the Constitution requires, it's an office created by the Court, with powers and structure crafted in a way Congress did not and in many cases probably would not have passed.
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Andy Craig @andycraig.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
Accepting the (wrong) premise, if Congress created agencies and officers structured unconstitutionally, then the rule of law result would be striking down their existence and powers entirely. Instead the Court treats it like a one-way ratchet: grants of power by Congress upheld, limits struck down.
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Julian Sanchez @normative.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
This is a dangerous pattern with this Court: They find a delegation paired with a constraint, decide they don’t like the constraint, but appear totally untroubled by the idea that Congress delegated the power only *because* prior precedent assured them their constraints would be binding.
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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
Chief Justice Roberts: “We exempt the Federal Reserve from the Slaughter decision due to its unique historical relationship with my stock portfolio.”
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Alejandra Caraballo @esqueer.net · 24/06/2026
The sentencing here is so absurd, it's a miscarriage of justice. A guy who wasn't present or involved got 30 years for moving a box of zines. The two people who helped plan January 6th, Enrique Tarrio and Stewart Rhodes got 22 years and 18 years for seditious conspiracy, respectively.
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Andy Craig @andycraig.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
Trump sometimes loses at SCOTUS not because they're noble exemplars of judicial independence but because they're partisan hacks for a slightly different flavor within the GOP coalition. Sometimes he loses in Congress, too, and it'd be just as absurd to praise the "independence" of congressional GOP.
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Zak Woodman @zacharywoodman.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
The delusional leftoid conspiracy theory of price gouging to exolain politically inconvenient price increases finds its way into Trump's brain. Authoritarians try not to be economically illiterate challenge. Difficulty: impossible.
nbcnews.com
Trump accuses oil companies of gas price ‘gouging,’ calls for DOJ probe
“The big Oil Companies are not dropping their price at the pump commensurate with the sharply lower prices they are paying for Oil,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. The U.S.-Iran deal has eased the press...
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Dr. DaShanne Stokes @dashannestokes.com · 22/06/2026
ICE is still committing crimes and acts of terrorism against innocent people.
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Computational Cosmetologist @dferrer.bsky.social · 21/06/2026
I had strong priors against LLMs for medicine. There are a lot of doctors in my family and I grew up viewing doctors as careful, skilled professionals. I had plenty of bad medical experiences, but I thought it would be hard to do better. Then an LLM found a cure for my 2 decade chronic condition...
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Andy Craig @andycraig.bsky.social · 21/06/2026
Most of the time when Sanders has a dumb idea, it's because he really is a socialist in a way most others who've glommed onto the label as an affectation to mean the left-most flank of mainstream US politics are not.
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Zak Woodman @zacharywoodman.bsky.social · 21/06/2026
A world of cosmopolitian openness that respects human rights and doesn't treat people as lesser because they were born on the wrong side of an arbitrary line in the sand, a world that encourages citizens to be critical of the state instead of reflexively and thoughtlessly identifying with it.
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